It’s the dog days of summer, and that can only mean one thing: it’s time for our annual roundup of the latest, hottest truth music. Load up your playlist with some of these tracks and blare it at the beach, at the bar-b-q or in the car on that big road trip! And if you have any suggestions for good truth music tracks, share ’em in the comments.

Excited to check these artists out and subscribe to Vin Caggiano’s channel! Always love your musical variety. Recently been trying to get back into arts myself and some inspiration for guitar pieces seems well timed! Thanks James!

For me all of these songs hold some important ‘truths’ – Concrete Blonde’s “Everybody Knows” or “True” – and the Vaughan Brothers “Tick Tock” – and once in a documentary “The Aristocrats” Jacob Rothschild was described as “the personification of a man of wealth and taste” thereafter changing my understanding of the Rolling Stone’s song “Sympathy for the Devil”….. Oh and Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs” has got to be on the list if not there already… and I love Willie Nelson’s “Peaceful Solution”

MorePositive says:…and once in a documentary “The Aristocrats”, JacobRothschildwas described as “the personification of a man of wealth and taste” thereafter changing my understanding of the Rolling Stone’s song“Sympathy for the Devil”…..

Funny how bands that I’ve listened to for years have nuggets of political statements and truth sprinkled in there that never occurred to me before I “woke up”. One of those bands is System of a Down, for any of you out there that like heavy rock. For reggae rock style, the band Rebelution has a lot of lyrics about being free human beings and the corruption of the political system. Here are some lyrics from “Prison Song” by System of a Down:

“Following the rights movements you clamped on with your iron fists
Drugs became conveniently available for all the kids”

“Minor drug offenders fill your prisons, you don’t even flinch
All our taxes paying for your wars against the new non-rich”

“Utilizing drugs to pay for
Secret wars around the world
Drugs are now your global policy
Now you police the globe”

“Drug money is used to rig elections
And train brutal corporate sponsored
Dictators around the world”

Don’t feel bad. When I was a young redneck in South Georgia in the ’70s, we all listened to “The Village People”. While it wouldn’t have made any difference to us (gay hate didn’t really take off until the “In Your Face” campaign started) as this was the bonus hour of the Sexual Revolution, so anything was cool. Excuse me while I reminiscence. Funny how all these rights movements always backfire so much and give us so many more problems. Jim, who just saved his neighbor’s clothes from the rain and was repaid by Karma of a green nature. Excuse me while I get dinner ready.

But onto the real reason I came here. As I run my distasteful task of conducting my own intelligence, I am forced to read from some crazy sources. But this one paid off. Roger Stone (who always forgets the bad from Trump.)has an article which is pretty good once you get past the rhetoric. Plus, all 17 spy agencies are listed, along with their assigned duties, and a few nice additions. The rest of it? I always bring a lot of salt to one of his articles, but it has some gems as well. Take care, Jim who is now going to edit because he tends to ramble after meeting Karma.

Well I’m making this up as I go along but I’d say the time of King Arthur… (an episode from a French mini-series called “Kaamelott” that was a hit in France and that came from my own adopted home town with people I either met or worked with):

Cat Stevens got me safely through adolescence (during the Tillerman times). Which, sadly, is more than I can say for other dear members of my family.

I understand the need to be drawn to peace, health, community and regeneration – Cat Stevens explains very well why he converted to Islam.

But though most people live their religion, or desire to live it, for peaceful, loving and constructive purposes

it appears to me that the inherent dogma of any religion ultimately ends up negating its own central precepts and is so often manipulated to betray these central precepts through some sort of manifest violence.

Cat Stevens explained how he was tricked by the press into appearing vindictive towards Salomon Rushdie when asked about the fatwa’s ruling on “Blasphemy”.

he explains how he viewed the “Arab Spring” in Egypt…

and it seems clear to me that the emotion and inherent clanesque mentality involved in religion blind people as to the multiple dimensions of what is really happening in and around them.

(Clanesque: why Islam as opposed to Christianity or Judaism going so far as to adopt the name of a specific religion as your own patronym.)

Music on the other hand (often instrumentalized by religion among other organizations)

CAN offer the emotion without the interpretation, without trying to channel that emotion towards specific desired behavior.

Oh yeah man!
A classic!
I remember those times in the early 70’s with the AM radio playing this song while I’m driving down a country road singing along, loudly out-of-tune so badly the cows would run away.

I myself am very much into conscious hip hop: Immortal Technique, Lowkey, Akala, Logic (the British one, not the American one), Genocide, DISL Automatic, Brother Ali, etc. If anyone knows similar artists, be sure to let me know!

I’m livid when, the gimmicking wins/
From beginning to end, no gimmick; If I rap it, dude I live it then/
And you can’t do it, so ain’t no need for mimicking/
I’m not innocent. I’m on a mission, so let me finish it/
Matter of time before they summon the army in/
I’m probably on the FBI’s most wanted list/
I’m probably going to end up hung like an ornament/
I’m on a life mission to abolish all the government/

It’s dumb and I’m beyond pissed/
So we’re going to cut to the chase and get rid of metaphorical nonsense/
None of that eloquent bogusness/
I want you to know what it is sucka kid, y’all people keep voting in/

They rob, kill, and steal by the day/
I’d be a buffoon to trust the state/
You’re a tool and fool. Just keep taking the bait/
Making mistake, after mistake, after mistake/
Believe me, this ain’t the typical “Oh the government’s corrupt.”
Bro, that’s too easy/
You gotta take responsibility because you willingly
Give power to the state, when it’s the state that is your enemy

Stuck on stupid, you gotta be on it/
Cry about violence but they got a monopoly on it/
And you keep on buying in to what that man say/
Not knowing that every mandate, just expands the state

Hook:
Look around tell me what you see, because it’s..
Coming down, coming down. Are you listening?
Stop and look. This is what I mean:
It’s going down. It’s going down

Look, it ain’t really hard to keep up
The politician just hypnotized you with free stuff
More and more statism, and y’all people just eat up
Yet crying and you’re protesting about how the police suck
Y’all don’t get no sympathy from me, because that’s the bed that you made
So you gotta lay
More inconsistent by the day, making mistake after mistake after mistake

At some time you gotta realize/
That the same crap that you despise might be your demise/
And I’d advise that you become more knowledgeable on subjects like economics that benefit/
Not memes on the internet
So when you’re mad and you get so combative, you gotta step back and take a stab at your voting habits/
The average man don’t understand that he don’t know;
You can be free or be a slave, but you can’t be both

Hook

Craig Mabbitt: Open Your Eyes
The state you’re in, is a state of mind
Freedom disguised, the state you’re in is a state of mind

So they’re wanting a savior?
Yet everyday, we go through voluntary exchanges/
They say “who’s going to build the roads?” without taxation/
So you give them a reason to confiscate my payments/
And that’s exactly what the state needs
For you to think you need them. But it’s fake, see?/
Maybe you’d see that they are what they swore to prevent/
A monopolized corporation, it’s called government/

My Brother wanted to leaf a comment on Youtube but it got censored, so he asked me to enter it here, enjoy.

“This is my contribution to the Thruth Music Playlist 2017. I don’t play in a band and I’m certainly no professional musician. I’m just a blind guy with a guitar, keyboard and a laptop, but I hope you can enjoy my efforts anyway. http://www.kristofnijs.be/fluoride/index.html “

Skinny Puppy “Assimilate”https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Skinny+Puppy+Assimilate
* There’s at least 3 versions. The lyrics are good, even if you don’t like 80s dark industrial alternative. I was introduced to this in highschool around 1986 by the cutest blond cheerleader who looked like a young innocent June Cleaver with legs that stretched forever. She put her walkman headphones on me and blew my mind. Can’t judge a book…

FatKat N’ The Lobbyists just reminded me of Ezra Lee my friend from Oakland. He and some friends formed a group called Cat Five or CatFive or Cat 5. It’s a shitty name to search for not only because of the multiple spellings but Cat Five is also the ethernet cable we all use and is short for a lot of things like Category Five. I’m not sure if Ezra is also Dark Cat / DarkCat / DarKat or if that’s one of the other guys.

Anyway, they made an incredible CD album that I ripped but long since lost. It’s trip-hop lo-fi downtempo acidjazz chill beats and breaks with a ridiculously vast array of pop-culture and political soundbytes. Unfortunately there are a couple CD skips in my rips and the soundbytes are all dated from a decade ago or earlier with George Bush the lesser.

This is the album cover: http://mp3red.me/cover/2137344-460×460/kataphonics.jpg
Ten years ago Ezra was also an artist, street artist, t-shirt designer, and upcycle and repurposed clothing with Charity his girlfriend. Since I moved from Oakland I haven’t kept up, so maybe this is old news.

I don’t know him well enough to say he’d be okay with anyone using his music for activist videos, but I really suspect he would considering his almost excessive use of other people’s sampling with a fight the power message. Also, with his talents he could have sold out and done other thing.

If anyone is really interested I could torrent (perfect transfer) or YouTube (remuxed quality) them.

Ezra Lee (sounds like Israeli) seems to be a popular name. On YouTube there is an interior designer/architect, a black man, and an Australian rockabilly singer – none of which are my man, but I found this old video about Ezra@Azure : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTdMDg89oRY

I heard a live version of this at the end of a Tim Kelly interview. A classic track from a classic album. I’d never thought of “the man” as “the establishment” when hearing this in the past. Now that I know, I’ll never forget.

Mark Knopfler, a member of Dire Straights, also did the soundtrack for Wag The Dog, a political parody movie (more truth than parody). On the score is a wonderful optimistic upbeat folksy track that I just love. It has no lyrics, so I don’t know how political it is beyond associations.

I used to watch a lot of documentaries. Give or take a few, a dozen years ago “Why We Fight” was a good one by Eugine Jareki. It really cleared up/solidified a lot for me. I didn’t know at the time how connected his family is. Wikipedia will never tell you all about that stuff. Extremely similar to “Why We Fight” was another docu called “The Oil Factor”, as well as Gerard’s other great docus – except they lacked decent graphics. I offered my help. The Universe aligned and I was directing computer animation in Vancouver while he was producing his next docu in Seattle.

Originally it was going to be called Ilanuq, which is Inuit for “Belonging” the title of his next docu, which Dustin Hoffman narrated, and I animated parts of it before I was pulled out (another story).

This docu was about climate change and I was thrilled to be a part of trying to save the world.

I really wish I knew then what I understand now. It’s all lies and scams.

I just watched this video. When they started talking about the music of the 60s and the drug culture as well, I immediately thought of the Doors. After all, Morrison’s father was Naval Intelligence, and all those conspiracy theories even back then about this. Then, lo and behold, they mention the Doors, and specifically LA Woman! This is a song that I specifically relate to them as it was played every single day on the radio station I listened to at the time. It was played so much that I grew to hate it.
Between these two videos on music, I realize just how ignorant I am concerning music. I generally just listen to it in the background, occasionally really becoming involved in the guitar playing of some of the blues masters. Just another case of realizing that no matter how much you try to learn, we will all die nearly as ignorant as when we were born.

The music goes on the playlist for an odd reason…
For me, the lyrics epitomize that “attitude and think of Psychopaths” who work together, whether in Wall Street or the Government or Banking or War.
It is how things go when one “breaks bad”.

Holly Seeliger (Zoon Politikon) and I are trying to find her music that I’m going to animate an intro and outro for. And this came up. While Goldie’s lyrics are short and simple they express some of the existential angst a lot of us are suffering right now – on the edge of being political.